


I hope you're healing

by bigchickcannibalistic



Category: Girl Serpent Thorn - by Melissa Bashardoust
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-06
Updated: 2020-12-06
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:16:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27914413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bigchickcannibalistic/pseuds/bigchickcannibalistic
Summary: So she stands, rooted to the spot with her fingers wrapped around Parvaneh’s wrist, mindful still, of her grip — mindful so the thorns don’t catch Parvaneh’s skin — and her eyes boring into Parvaneh’s amber. So she stands, rooted like the vines in her garden and uncomprehending what she’s said, what she’s offered until Parvaneh looks pointedly at the bed and —Soraya replays the words in her head —It’s big enough for two— and flushes crimson.“And here Parisa was warningmenot to be too forward —”
Relationships: Soraya/Parvaneh
Comments: 3
Kudos: 11





	I hope you're healing

**Author's Note:**

> This is me trying to beat my writer's block with a stick.
> 
> Also if you haven't read already Girl, Serpent, Thorn by Melissa Bashardoust, what are you waiting for? It's a delight

I

Soraya couldn’t sleep the first night after it was all over. After the main thing was over, would be more accurate. There was still a city to rebuild, div’s to check-up on, soldiers to tend to and —

There was a lot to do. Is it any wonder she can’t sleep, when thinking about it all gives her a headache? When listing all the tasks at hand makes her so restless she wishes she could jump out of her own skin? It feels like it did before, when the poison coursing through her veins was trying to get out at the slightest provocation. Only now when her fingers follow the veins, nails scrapping against skin, they catch on the mishmash landscape of thorns and her breath shudders —

“Do they itch?”

Soraya starts, hand instinctively flying to cover the inside of her wrist before she recognizes the voice, recognizes the slight _tut_ at the move. _Parvaneh_. Soraya hadn’t even heard her arrive, and suppresses a flinch when she turns to see Parvaneh sitting close to her on the parapet. _Must be a parik thing,_ she muses, before a corner twitches up, _or maybe it’s a Parvaneh thing._

Something slides along her fingers, and it’s when Soraya’s eyes dart down to see Parvaneh’s fingers gently tracing where her own have dug between her thorns, that Soraya remembers the question.

“No,” she mumbles, before clearing her throat. “I was merely thinking.”

Her eyes linger on Parvaneh’s fingers, on the way they trace along the thorns without hesitation and yet stay light as a feather. Light and yet Soraya could swear her skin tingles wherever they touch. Where Azad’s touch had always felt like fire, like something had been trying to press heat into her skin, Parvaneh’s has always been light as a breeze. Always been a suggestion of a touch. Soraya had first thought it was because she hesitated, but now she’s come to realise it’s simply Parvaneh’s choice.

She is capable of bending dungeon bars and yet she chooses to be gentle.

“About?” Parvaneh asks.

“Everything.”

“Ew.” Parvaneh clicks her tongue and Soraya snorts. She doesn’t have to look to know Parvaneh’s wrinkling her nose, the web surrounding her eyes shifting along and somehow making her seem younger. Well okay fine maybe Soraya looks up to see it happen. It is amusing and endearing and she’s allowed.

She breathes out, fingers easing from her thorns at the thought. She’s allowed. Just like she’s allowed to move outside of the passageways. Like how she’s allowed to touch without worrying about poison. Like how she’s allowed to hold Parvaneh’s hand or drag her into a kiss without anything in between them.

Well okay, maybe a few thorns between them.

Something taps her on the forehead, and Soraya leans back, blinking at the offending finger. Then she looks over at an amused Parvaneh, amber eyes glowing in the dark.

“You’re doing it again.” And she finished her words with another tap against Soraya’s forehead, and a click of her tongue. “Thinking too much. You need —” Another tap. “A distraction.”

Soraya raises her brow, two fingers coming up to move Parvaneh’s finger away. “And you’re here to provide such a distraction?”

A grin spreads over Parvaneh’s lips, and Soraya doesn’t miss the note of trickery in it. “Of course.”

It’s all the warning she gets, before Parvaneh’s wings flutter behind her and she’s vanished into the night. Soraya doesn’t think much of it, but the next thing Soraya knows, she has a lap-full of a grinning parik, holding onto one of Soraya’s hands while pressing her back into the other and —

And Soraya’s too stunned by the sensations — the weight in her lap, the fingers intertwined with her own, the flex of muscle beneath her touch — and the fact that Parvaneh’s so close — _Oh Creator she’s really close oh boy oh shit_ — to do anything much than stare at Parvaneh and force the poison as far away from the surface as possible, and honestly she should’ve expected something like this. Parvaneh loves nothing more than to kick at expectations and surprise Soraya at any given opportunity.

And then Parvaneh literally buries her head in Soraya’s neck with a soft noise and whatever thoughts Soraya had have most definitely evaporated.

———————

“Soraya?”

The sound Soraya makes is somewhere between a hum and a high-pitched whine, and not at all calming like she had hoped.

“Are you okay?”

“Yes,” she presses out, not any calmer than the hum-slash-whine.

“Maybe this was too much,” Parvaneh mumbles, moving to get up even before Soraya manages to say anything. It’s only when Soraya tightens her arm around Parvaneh’s back, brings her hand fully around to Parvaneh’s other side and presses her fingers down that the parik stops.

Stops and yelps in such a cute tone Soraya does a double take.

“What was that?”

“ _Nothing,_ ” Parvaneh insists. Her hand moves to cover Soraya’s at her side but Soraya is quicker and as she slides her fingers down, firmly against Parvaneh’s side she feels her girlfriend flinch and muffle a giggle.

A grin spreads on Soraya’s lips. “You’re —”

“No.”

“— ticklish.”

“Don’t you dare, Soraya!” Parvaneh raises her hand, teeth digging into her lower lip to stop any other giggles, and wings fluttering in warning.

But it’s too late, and they both know it. Still Parvaneh put up a valiant fight in Soraya’s first ever tickle war. It ended up with her sprawled over Soraya’s lap anyway, giggling out of breath against Soraya’s neck and hands tangled with Soraya’s. Soraya doesn’t think she minded it much, if the way she drags Soraya down into a kiss is any indicator.

———————

II

There were and there were not many things Soraya experiences for the first time after the whole mess with Azad and the divs calms down. She did not think ‘sharing a bed with someone’ would be among them — when rightly it should, she had very few friends and even fewer reasons for sleepovers even before being confided to Golvahar. Nor did she think it would happen just days after the would-be-execution-slash-wedding-slash-battle.

She did think should such an unlikely thing happen, it would be her own tongue that would put her in such a situation. Truly Parvaneh hadn’t mentioned anything as she stretched from her place lying on a rug while Soraya lounged on the window seat right next to her, nor did she show anything other than drowsiness when she mentioned she should go to her room and rest for the night. (“I don’t want to repeat another all-nighter. Parisa can only roll her eyes so much before she risks having them stay like that,” Parvaneh teases, making exaggerated eyes with her hands, purely to tease out a giggle out of Soraya.) (It works every time, not that Soraya’s complaining.)

The pariks were given their own rooms as honorary guests until the reparations are finished. And there’s nothing amiss with their rooms, furnished much like Soraya’s and with more furniture than their have any idea how to navigate and more doodads as Parvaneh puts it than they’ve seen in a long while. (And Soraya has caught a few of the pariks fascinated with mirrors and their reflections. It always brings a smile to her lips, and she only feels a bit bad when she has to drag their attention away with a cleared throat.) And their rooms aren’t too far from Soraya’s, certainly not an insurmountable distance, merely two hallways away — less if she used the passageways.

But there is a part of her that doesn’t want her late night talks with Parvaneh to end. A part of her that still craves the company even though she knows come morning she’ll see her girlfriend again. A part of her that’s afraid she’ll wake up and it’ll all be a fevered dream. Afraid she’ll look down at her hand and see the unmarred skin, see green poisonous veins on the inside of her wrist instead of thorns against her knuckles; afraid she’ll be back to passageways and a lonely garden and a childhood of isolation. Afraid she won’t be greeted with a teasing twinkle in amber eyes, or a flutter of moth wings or a playful dance of fingers between her thorns.

It is foolish. She knows these fears are foolish.

But still but still but still —

So she panics.

So she blurts out the offer before she thinks better of it.

So she stands, rooted to the spot with her fingers wrapped around Parvaneh’s wrist, mindful still, of her grip — mindful so the thorns don’t catch Parvaneh’s skin — and her eyes boring into Parvaneh’s amber. So she stands, rooted like the vines in her garden and uncomprehending what she’s said, what she’s offered until Parvaneh looks pointedly at the bed and —

Soraya replays the words in her head — _It’s big enough for two_ — and flushes crimson.

“And here Parisa was warning _me_ not to be too forward —”

“ _That’s not what I meant!_ ” Soraya interrupts her girlfriends teasing, hiding her face behind her hands, but it does nothing to quell Parvaneh’s laugh. She thinks the sight of such a flustered Soraya only intensified Parvaneh’s amusement. “I merely thought we could spend the night —”

“Oh is _that_ how the humans like to phrase it?”

“No! No — Urgh, you are insufferable,” Soraya groans behind her hands, sitting blindly back at the window seat, hiding both her crimson cheeks and her smile at Parvaneh’s laugh. Were she to remove her hands, there’s no doubt she’d find Parvaneh clutching at her stomach, half bent and wings fluttering behind her.

“Come on, ‘Raya.” Fingers tug on her left hand until they manage to sneak in between her brow and the fingers and tug, gently. They tug once — twice — until Soraya relents and lets her hand be lowered. She blinks up to see Parvaneh grinning at her, amber eyes sparkling. “I was only teasing.”

“Yes,” Soraya sighs without any real weight behind it, lowering her other hand, “you’ve grown fond of doing that, haven’t you?”

“You make is so delightfully easy.” Parvaneh shrugs, as if it can’t be helped, and she presses a kiss between Soraya’s knuckles to stave off the eye-roll Soraya fells coming. She’s not sure what works — the kiss or the smile she feels against her knuckles.

Or maybe it’s the fact Parvaneh’s holding her hand, the sensation of her thumb tracing the edges of her fingers, without worry for her thorns, worry for the poison. _“I’ll be careful enough for the both of us,”_ she had said the first time she’s taken Soraya’s hand and pressed her lips in the middle of her palm.

“If you want — if you’re comfortable —” Soraya blinks back to the present, eyes straying from where the thumb’s running circles around her middle knuckle to Amber eyes watching her carefully. “—I’ll stay the night.”

A beat.

“You don’t punch in your sleep, right?” Parvaneh asked and Soraya snorted, hand coming up to hide the noise.

“No. No, I —” Soraya shakes her head, eyes falling to the bed which is definitely big enough for both of them and — and it would leave very little room between them. Soraya wouldn’t even have to stretch much to touch Parvaneh, to run her hand along Parvaneh’s arm. Would only have to turn on her side to be able to snake her arm until her hand was between Parvaneh’s wings and —

And she had done it before. Ran her fingers between Parvaneh’s wings, grabbed her hand when she wanted to get her attention, or simply hugged her before they got separated for their daily tasks but —

But all of those times she was in control. All of those time she had made sure to keep the poison down, or had been careful of her thorns. All of those time she wasn’t half-asleep or fully asleep and suffering a nightmare — because simply removing Azad from the equation didn’t magically remove the nightmares or fears or Soraya’s jumping up with a cold sweat —

“Soraya. _Soraya._ ”

Soraya startled as something tugged on her hand, linking to see Parvaneh staring at her with brows furrowed and both of her hands enveloping Soraya’s.

“Breathe, Soraya.” And Soraya inhales sharply at the instruction, suddenly aware how tense her shoulders are. “Good. Great. Again. With me.”

Soraya follows along as Parvaneh dramatically inhales, holds it in along with her and exhales in time with her girlfriend, feeling her shoulders ease along with the pressure.

“I’m sorry,” Soraya says, shaking her head but Parvaneh shushes her, lips pressing against her fingers.

“I’m not gonna do anything you’re not comfortable with.” She tugs on Soraya’s hands until their eyes meet, inclines her head, raises her brows until Soraya nods in understanding.

“I cannot get comfortable with it, unless I try,” Soraya grumbles. She tugs on her hand, tugs and tugs until Parvaneh’s close enough that Soraya only has to stretch her neck just so to bring their foreheads together. She does it both to calm her thoughts, and because she knows Parvaneh’ll drag her nose against Soraya’s. It had startled her, the morning Parvaneh first did it to wake Soraya during breakfast, but she’s come to crave it in a way she craves any and all touch from Parvaneh.

“And I want to try.” She drags her nose against Parvaneh’s, keeps her eyes locked on her girlfriend’s before she plants a quick peck on her lips and retreats back. “Please?”

Parvaneh shakes her head, expression helpless. “You drive a hard bargain, Soraya. But —” She raises a finger between them. “I give as good as I get when punched in the face.”

Soraya huffs, shaking her head. “Noted.”

———————

Soraya wakes to the sound of the servants knocking on her door; wakes to the feeling of arms around her waist, a warmth against her back and a huff against the back of her neck; wakes to the feeling of words — _Five more minutes_ — press against her skin.

Wakes feeling warm and giddy. She echoes Parvaneh’s words, waist for the sound of footsteps to recede, snakes a hand between the two holding her waist, before she turns over and presses a clumsy kiss into Parvaneh’s lips. And another. And another. And an—

“’Raya nooo —“ Parvaneh mumbles against her lips, the hand trapped between them pushing at Soraya’s shoulder clumsily, eyes furiously closed and lips tugged into a pout. “You can’t bribe me with kisses.”

And Soraya’s more than happy to prove her wrong.


End file.
